586 BOG EU OF WENDOVEB. [A.D. 1-234. //oie the king dismissed the bishop of Winchester and the J'oicterins. About this time, on the fourth Sunday in Lent, which fell on the 9f.i of April, a council was held at Westminster, at which the king, the earls, and barons, and the lately consecrated archbishop, with his suffragan bishops, assembled to make proper provisions for composing the disturbances in the kingdom. The archbishop then in company with the bishops and other prelates present, approached the king, and gave hiin his advice as well as that of the bishops concerning the desolate state and imminent danger of the kingdom, and repeated to him the disadvantages which had been set forth to him at the couferenco held a little while before. He also boldly told the king, that, unless he very soon abandoned his errors, and made peace with his faithful subjects in his own kingdom, he, the archbishop, with all the other prelates present, would at once pronounce sentence of excommunication against him and all the other opposers and perverters of peace and trancprillity. The king dutifully listened to the advice of the prelates, and answered with humility, that he would yield to their counsels in everything ; and then, finding out his error, after a few days he ordered Peter bishop of Winchester to go to his bishopric, and attend to the cure of souls, and thenceforth on no account to meddle with the affairs of the kingdom, ile also ordered Peter de Rivaulx, to whose pleasure the whole of England was subjected, without fail to give up the royal eastles to him, to render an account of the royal money, and immediately to leave his court, declaring with an oath that, if he were not a beneficed person, and admitted to the rights of the clergy, he would order his two eyes to be torn out. ile also expelled all the Poictevius, as well from his court as from the charge of his castles, and sent them away to their own country, ordering them never to show their faces to him again. Ile then, in his eager desire to bring about a peace, sent Edmund, archbishop of Canterbury, with the bishops of Chester and Rochester, into Wales, to make arrangements for peace with Llewellyn and Richard the earl marshal. Having thus dismissed all his evil advisers, he recalled to his service his natural subjects, and submitted to the advice of the archbishop and bishops, hoping by tlieir assistance to bring hack his disturbed kingdom to its proper state. ï/ow the earl marshal icent to irelanl an I carried on the rrar. About this time messengers came to Richard the earl marshal, telling him how the Irish nobles had invaded his territory, taken some of his castles, and were roving through the country indulging in pillage. As the king had. since Christmas, given up his expedition against Wales, and gone to the northern parts of the kingdom, the marshal set sail for Ireland, about the day of the Purification of St. .Mary, with only fifteen knights, for the purpose of keeping the malicious designs of his enemies in check. On hie